Having recently gotten an offer after interviewing at Google, I can testify that those preparation packets are a sufficient but not necessary condition for doin

Having recently gotten an offer after interviewing at Google, I can testify that those preparation packets are a sufficient but not necessary condition for doing well on an interview, and seem to be primarily targeted at making sure people who want to prepare don't do so badly. I spent about an hour on the plane reading through some example questions online, and did fine. I suspect that a lot of questions I "figured out" a clever solution to could actually have been solved with some obscure algorithm, but by treating them as puzzles rather than memorization tasks I was better able to demonstrate my skills as a candidate. In short, I think the exact same question is interpreted as a cool algorithm challenge or a recall check, and the interviewer will be fine with you rederiving the answer on the spot if you are quick thinking enough to do so.